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Say this for the French: They manage to keep their sense of humor in the face of a crisis. First, a massive butter shortage has swept the country this fall. Now, much of the country has woken up to find itself with limited internet, thanks to a power outage that has kneecapped the country’s largest web host.

Meet OVH, perhaps not a household name around the world, but one of the biggest and most respected web hosts in Europe. This morning, OVH lost power due to an issue with the utility company EDF. OVH CEO and cofounder Octave Klaba issued this statement:

In case you don’t speak French, here is a useless translation via Twitter/Bing:

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“We have a concern of food of SBG1/SBG4. 2 electric EDF arrivals are down (!!) and 2 channels of generators began in default (!). All 4 arrivals elec fuel more room routing. We are all on the problem.”

Haha. Don’t worry. Despite what you may think, the French are not powering their internet using foie gras. In this case, “food” means the power supply, and apparently the EDF lines and the backup generators have gone down.

But OVH is ON IT!

Meanwhile, #OVHGATE has been trending on Twitter this morning as the French amuse themselves by contemplating life with limited internet:

“Thanks, OVH. Thanks to your idiocy, I have to spend my time cleaning my desk. If this continues, I’m going to have to talk to my coworkers” (translated).

https://twitter.com/LULISHOP_OMP/status/928553787433848833

Thoughts and prayers, folks. Also, send butter and internet.

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